Rubens, "Four Philosophers" (1611)
Pitti, Florence
Rubens, "Four Philosophers" (1611)
Pitti, Florence
People who engage seriously in philosophizing have different aims. Some have been religious leaders, like Saint Augustine, who have tried to explain & justify certain religious points of view. Some have been scientists, like Rene Descartes, who attempted to justify & explain the meaning & importance of various scientific discoveries & theories. Others, like John Locke & Karl Marl, philosophized in order to effect certain changes in the political organization of society. Many have been interested in justifying or spreading some set of ideas which they thought might aid mankind. Others have had no such grandiose purpose, but merely wished to understand certain features of the world in which they lived, & certain beliefs that people held.
The occupations of philosophers have been as varied as their aims. Some have been teachers, often university professors giving courses in philosophy (St. Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages who taught at the University of Paris, or John Dewey in the twentieth century who lectured at Columbia University). Others have been leaders of religious movements (St. Augustine was Bishop of Hippo at the decline of the Roman Empire, George Berkeley was the Bishop of Cloyne in lreland in the eighteenth century). Many philosophers have had ordinary occupations (Baruch Spinoza was a lens-grinder; John Locke was a medical doctor; John Stuart Mill was a writer for magazines, & briefly a Member of Parliament). Many philosophers have been scientists or mathematicians. Some have had careers which kept them far removed from the excitement and crises of everyday life; others were continually occupied in the most active pursuits. Regardless of their aims, or their occupations, philosophers have, by & large, shared a common conviction that thoughtful examination & analysis of our views, & our evidence for them, is important & worthwhile.
approach
All philosophers want to find out what various basic ideas or concepts that we have mean, what we base our knowledge on, what standards should be employed in arriving at sound judgments, what beliefs we ought to have. By reflecting (thinking about) such questions the philosopher feels that we can achieve a more significant understanding of the universe, natural & human. One of the earliest & best at this was Socrates (pictured above).
Recently I have tried to give classes that give students some idea of a "philosophical" approach by raising questions like those that Socrates (& Plato) asked twenty-three hundred years ago:
examples
In order to make clearer what the philosopher is seeking and what he does, let us consider briefly two examples from the earliest history of philosophy, which indicate the sort of situations that have caused intellectual consideration of various fundamental beliefs.
The first example is that of the first Greek philosophers, who lived in the sixth century B.C., in one of the Greek colonies in Asia Minor, the part which is now Turkey. From the little we know of this era it seems that the vast majority of the populace was willing to accept a mythological explanation of events, an explanation like those we find in the works of Homer. Natural occurrences were explained in terms of the activities of gods or spirits who inhabited the natural world. The wars, jealousies & rivalries among the gods, & their relations with men and women, were taken to account for the events of the visible world.
The thinkers who began the philosophical quest were those who found that when they scrutinized these accepted beliefs they were seen to be inadequate. Different societies had different legends & mythologies. Most of these either conflicted with the others or with themselves. The explanations were always based upon insufficient evidence, & could never adequately account for all the information people had acquired about the world. The philosophers, to the dismay of their contemporaries, challenged the believers in mythology to prove their views, or to find a better theory, one that would satisfy reasonable people. Out of this rejection of traditionally accepted beliefs, & the search for more defensible theories, came the attempts of thoughtful men to explain the natural world in some consistent & rational fashion.
Similarly, in the Bible, in the Book of Job, we are given a picture of the beginning of the philosophical quest. Job is portrayed as living in a world in which people accept that the universe is governed by a just & good God who rewards the just & punishes the bad, & that this system of divine retribution works out immediately in everyone's lifetime. Job, we are told, "was perfect & upright, & one that feared God, & eschewed evil", and yet he was punished. Job & his "comforters" discussed this apparent conflict between the accepted belief in God's goodness & justice and what was happening before their very eyes (i.e., the torments of Job). The "comforters" refused to examine their view with critical eyes, & instead denied the facts. They attempted to convince Job that he must have been a bad man, otherwise he could not be in trouble. Job, on the other hand, saw that the accepted system of belief could not be adequate to account for what we do in fact know about the world, namely, that sometimes the bad flourish and the good suffer. The Book of Job reveals the defects of the traditionally held view about the nature of the world. Because of these, a different (more rationally defensible) theory has been sought. Several possible ones are examined in the course of the Book, & finally the only remaining solution is that we are unable by reason only to discover any satisfactory answer. Rather than rest content with inconsistent theories, the writer of the Book of Job could only pose a question. The people who lived "the unexamined life" tried their best to avoid facing the problem. But the philosopher, because of his need for intellectually satisfactory beliefs had to examine it. Even if he could not find a better theory than the traditional one, at least he would not accept a view that he knew was inadequate.
In these examples we can see some of the drive that sets the philosophical search in motion. There are always people who are ready to accept almost any view. But there are others who are troubled (or interested) by what appear to be inconsistencies in these views or are troubled because they do not see why these views ought to be accepted or why they are true. These philosophers begin to raise questions and seek solutions. How they do this, & what they have accomplished, is the subject of philosophy.
